


Ascension into Nowhere

by hauntedshoes



Category: The Centricide (Webseries)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Winged Hoppean, blood/body horror mention, but his life isn't fun, kinda deconstruction?, with a tiny bit of fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-11
Updated: 2020-07-11
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:42:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25207897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hauntedshoes/pseuds/hauntedshoes
Summary: Despite being known for it's radical and unsupervised plastic surgery experiments, Ancapistan does not grant dreams of flight like one may wish for.Minarchist has an awful lot of concern for a certain friend who decided to go through with such a thing. (One-shot)
Relationships: Minarchist/Hoppean
Comments: 6
Kudos: 34





	Ascension into Nowhere

**Author's Note:**

> This isn't a jab at anyone who likes the winged Hoppean headcanon. I like the winged Hoppean headcanon, it's just also good angst material.

“I haven’t seen you in days, was it really that bad?” Minarchist looked at his friend, who was slowly approaching him from behind.

Minarchist didn’t want to admit it, but he had been deeply worried for Hoppean when he decided to sign up for completely unregulated scientific experimentation which actually fairly common in Ancapistan. Minarchist knew that the set of weird tiny fangs inside of Ancap’s face must have come from somewhere, but he hadn’t connected the dots of sci-fi style hybrids being created in the city.

Hoppean, being short-sighted and honestly kind of strange (not that Minarchist had the guts to tell him he was) had gone into the rural backstreets and had yelled at these scientist fellas to give him wings.

Minarchist could see them now even though Hoppean was still a good distance from him. They were massive and a deep brown colour with a little fleck of white that was the bottom layer of the primary feathers. Staring at the kind of beautiful yet ghastly things, Minarchist searched his brain for whichever animal they were supposed to resemble or was used as a base to splice with his poor friend. The only thing that came to mind was an eagle, but it wasn’t like the World of Ideas was abound with animal life, especially amongst ideologies. Eagles were one of the most common when they did show up, however, having actual meaning to ideologies and such. It would have been easy for the so-called science-folk to get a hold of them for slicing experiments.

“Yes, it was that bad!” Hoppean yelled back. As he got closer Minarchist could observe the effect on his body a bit more closely.

Minarchist was already aware that Hoppean had zero sense of self-awareness or personal care. Minarchist had been the one to remind him to eat, drink and generally tend to his bodily functions on occasions. However, despite that, Hoppean looked immeasurably worse. Hoppean didn’t look merely tired, he looked sick. Far paler than normal, which was quite a feat. Minarchist would have used the term ‘vampiric’, but there must have been vampires out there with more colour on their face than Hoppean.

Hoppean’s face was close to the ground, and he kept rubbing his eyes, to a degree that made Minarchist uncomfortable. The wings themselves had a lot less colour close up, they were more like a grey-brown than a bright, vivid brown. The wings seemed somewhat close to Minarchist’s hair colour, which was only slightly lighter and obviously less grey. Minarchist wondered if they had actually dyed the wings to make them aesthetically fit him better. The wings themselves weren’t flying in the air but were close to scraping along the ground. The wings were pulling back the blue silk shirt Hoppean was wearing, Minarchist had recognised the shirt too. Hoppean wasn’t exactly fashion conscious so he would rotate the same three shirts like he was a cartoon character, he wore this light blue one with an awful lot of frequency. Now it looked torn up and ruined as if Hoppean had been cutting into it using a pair of scissors rather recklessly. It was falling apart, more than even Hoppean seemed to be falling apart. Judging by the frayed edges as Hoppean drew closer he had cut in ways to accommodate the wings, but now the entire thing was coming apart.

Minarchist took a deep breath, letting the smoke-filled air enter his lungs. Minarchist was starting to regret inviting Hoppean up to one of the many skyscrapers in Ancapistan. Then again, the more Minarchist thought about it, there weren’t many places in Ancapistan that wasn’t a skyscraper. A skyscraper with a needlessly expensive elevator – as it should be. Hoppean didn’t look he could drag those up a set of stairs that were in disrepair, though. At least the Ancapistan skyline was somewhat majestic from this angle. All the grey buildings lined up like notes on a piece of sheet music. Uneven, rising and falling, with the billboards on the side of them flashing every few seconds. The colours scattering the other buildings, bright and variable enough to block out the sun.

“Hoppean?” Minarchist asked before noticing that his friend had fallen over before reaching him in the sheer moments that he had looked away.

“What are you staring at? Come and help me up, loser!” Hoppean had fallen down in a highly uncomfortable looking position.

Minarchist ran over from the side of the sky top building. Looking over Hoppean’s body from the above and then downwards, it looked drained and contorted. Falling over had jolted the left-most wing’s bone in a kind of ‘v’ shape upwards. The bones that were used to construct them looked fairy week.  _ They needed to be made flexible for flying and such I suppose.  _

“Here let me get that.” Minarchist bit his lip as he stretched his arm forward to try and reach the wing in question.

“No, don’t you dare fucking touch that!” Hoppean snapped, Minarchist backed away.

As Minarchist did back away, leaving Hoppean to push against the asphalt by himself, alone. All the pushing against said asphalt just made Hoppean worse. As he struggled to get his hands and legs in the right position to actually push himself off the floor, he’d fall to the ground again. The weight of the wings, Minarchist assumed, must have been dragging Hoppean to the floor.

“Well, what are you doing,” Hoppean said with his head practically smashed against the ground. “Standing there? Do something for me, lunatic!”

Minarchist’s initial hesitation went away, and he ran immediately towards Hoppean to help him up. Avoiding his wings as closely as possible, lest he gets yelled at again.

Hoppean was heavy, really heavy. Despite his height, Hoppean was probably the lightest of all the ideologies Minarchist had met.  _ What else would you expect from someone who forgot to eat though?  _ His wings had added way too much extra weight to him, maybe enough for another whole Hoppean!

Minarchist did struggle to lift Hoppean but eventually did manage to wrap his arms around the weak man and force him to stand up again. As Minarchist let go of him, he wobbled, holding his arms out to steady himself, unsuccessfully.

“Woah. Wait you’re gonna –” Minarchist threw himself at Hoppean as he topped again. Using all of his strength to make him stand up straight again. Minarchist was all red by now, even on the cold evening that it was.

Finally stable, Hoppean narrowed his eyes. “Thanks for that.” Hoppean pushed Minarchist away from him and started to slowly make his way over to the high ledge at the edge of the building. He put his left arm onto it and cupping his head on his hand. He took a deep sigh and stood there, unblinking against the landscape.

Minarchist spent a moment in silence. Hoppean wasn’t himself not at all. Sure, he was normally pessimistic, grouchy, unapproachable but not to this level. Minarchist normally would have expected at least one shitty quip about minorities by now, but Hoppean was saying nothing. He just stood gasping for air, saying not a word.

Minarchist approached him again, standing by the skyline as he had before. He was careful not to ‘intrude’ onto Hoppean’s personal space. He had to stand close enough to him that Minarchist could catch him again but far away enough so that Hoppean won’t judge him.

“So, uh, how did it go?” Minarchist sheepishly asked.

Hoppean took another full gasp of air before screaming. “I haven’t slept in days!”

“In days?” Minarchist slid closer to him hesitantly.

“Nope! These things make it so I can’t lie on my back! Then even when I sit up, it becomes ever so fucking uncomfortable!” Hoppean rubbed his eyes again, he was obviously forcing himself to keep them open despite the pain.

“Did you at least get to fly? Isn’t that what you said you wanted to do?”

“Get to fly? Get to fly?!” Hoppean coughed as his anger drained his energy. “Well, k-kinda I can fly for a few minutes at a time? It’s uh, more comfortable than walking even if I can only do it for two minutes at most.”

“So the wings do work then?” Minarchist tilted his head.

Hoppean threw his entire head on the barrier along the edge of the building. “Ugh. God, I wish. It’s like two minutes of momentary relief from the harsh Earth pulling me back!”

“They really seem to be hurting you, don’t they?” Minarchist drew even closer inadvertently.

“They hurt like hell! Cool looking or not.” Luckily, Hoppean had not noticed Minarchist closing in as he continued his ranting. That and his need to grip the side of the building to prevent himself from cracking open his own head on the floor.

“Say, Hoppean, did you ever consider that the human body isn’t equipped to have and use wings?”

“Wait. We’re not human, though?”

Minarchist gave his friend a sly smile. “We’re not, but we’re still built that way, aren’t we and it’s not like our bodies can magically adapt to just anything, you know? We’re flexible but not that flexible. I think we still have to obey what humans call the laws of physics; I think.”

Hoppean looked as if he as about to open his mouth again to contest what Minarchist was saying but drew back after working out that he was right. He then gasped for air again as he fought against his own existence.

“I didn’t stop you because it would have totally infringed on your rights if I had, but at least I can be here now to tell you at the very least how you messed up.” Minarchist continued.

“But a winged humanoid political ideology in concept is really cool who was I to know?! I’ll deal with it, won’t I?” Hoppean said.

Minarchist tapped along the barrier, closer and closer, drawing himself toward Hoppean. “Your very real and apparently physical bone structure is far too heavy to accommodate them, your wings. The science weirdos would have had to have done a lot more to your body than just stick some wings on your back and act like they were guaranteed to work.” 

Hoppean was lost for words it seemed and only frustrated. _ It was a dumb decision, but most of all, it was his own dumb decision. _ He flopped over the side of the barrier again, face toward the ground. Not in any danger of falling but enough so the passive sense of defeat could clearly be seen his body language.

“Are you suggesting that I, Hoppean, were completely and utterly wrong?”

Minarchist could only wonder what he could see hanging his head over the top like that. The dingy alleyways of Ancapistan were never pleasant to look at.

Nevertheless, Minarchist was close enough to him now so that he could gently put his hand on his back. There was still a small space below his collarbone and his upper back that hadn’t been ripped open. Even with the shirt to cover it, Minarchist could tell the work was botched. The scars were evident and potentially still bleeding a little. The weight of the wings must have not been the only thing hurting Hoppean. The wings themselves were likely pushing into his muscles or even skeleton.

“It would be a lie for me to say that I thought you were right!” Minarchist laughed nervously and pat Hoppean’s back as carefully as possible, Hoppean still shuddered.

“So, what then? You think this makes me a dumbass?” Hoppean shouted before screaming and convulsing. It sounded like he gagged like he was trying to be sick as these extraneous limbs were pulling on him.

Minarchist lifted his hands away as Hoppean jolted so disturbingly. The wings mixed with the unregulated plastic pseudo-surgery must have been hell to live with.

Minarchist carried weapons. As did everyone, you needed to when recreational McNukes ™ were legal. Hoppean wasn’t watching, it would have been easy for Minarchist to grab the ultra-sharp knife from his pocket and immediately cut down Hoppean’s wings. The spilling blood and rough skin damage would have been worth it if it had saved his friend’s life from permeant misery.

But that wasn’t appropriate. This was Ancapistan, where we respect people’s decisions, even if they’re objectively stupid.

Instead, Minarchist slid his other hand around Hoppean, placing it on his shoulder like a kind of half hug.

“You wanna get a meal and discuss this over dinner?”

Hoppean nodded. There was a single tear in his eye. “Yeah, of course.”


End file.
